Her words came as a shock to him. It was now many months since they had spoken of George. Since the evening of his letter she had not even mentioned his name to the children nor encouraged Abner to talk about him. Abner saw the fateful direction in which the tide was drifting, and held steadily to his course. ‘It’s not so long since,’ he said, ‘that you told me to go away if I wanted to. The time they tried to get you to go and keep house for the parson. I reckon you’ve changed about a good bit since then.’ ‘Of course I’ve changed,’ she said. ‘I was a fool then. I didn’t know what I wanted. It’s different now.’ She paused, and then returned instinctively to her first words. ‘You can’t! You can’t!’ ‘You’re talking wild,’ he said brusquely. ‘I’ve thought it all out. It’s the only thing. You’ll have the comfort you’m used to, you and the kids. You won’t find it all that lonely with your stomachs full. It’s the bad times we’ve been having that makes you talk like that.’ Still she protested. ‘No, no, it isn’t. I couldn’t bear it. It’s like taking the life away from me.’ He didn’t wait to think what she meant. He was angry that she should increase the difficulty of his parting. ‘It’s no good talking to you,’ he said, ‘if you can’t see sense. I can’t take you along with me, can I?’ ‘Why not?’ She stood before him, meek, submissive. He was overwhelmed. Through all those months he had schooled himself so thoroughly that this sudden, voluntary surrender staggered him. His heart melted within him; the blood beat in his wrists. The past shrivelled away in that moment’s flame. The future was a blaze of light, and in the present he saw nothing but the woman of his desire. There had been no one like her. In all his lighter loves he had been able to see himself from without as a creature fevered with appetite. But now he was lost. He knew nothing in the world but Mary: her softened eyes, the curve of her lips, the thrill of her yielding body. He picked her up in his arms, holding her so that her breath came quickly on his cheek, and strained her toward him as though, by doing so, he might make her a part of himself. Even if he killed her with his strength in that moment she was made his, clasped immutably to him in the surrounding darkness. Their lips were joined in eager kisses. Her proud body gave itself to his arms. Her eyes were closed: her lips infinitely happy. ‘Mary, Mary . . .’ he whispered to her, rejoicing in the sound of her name. But his voice was strange, distant, thick with passion, and his clasping hands could not be certain that they held her. They followed every curve of her body, seeking to know if it were really she. His tongue stumbled on phrases that had never come to him before. ‘Mary, my little one, my beauty! Did I use you rough? Did I hurt you?’